About the Book
Earthquakes have taught us much about our planet's hidden structure and the forces that have shaped it. This knowledge rests not only on the recordings of seismographs, but also on the observations of eyewitnesses to destruction. During the nineteenth century, a scientific description of an earthquake was built of stories - stories from as many people in as many situations as possible. Sometimes their stories told of fear and devastation, sometimes of wonder and excitement. In "The Earthquake Observers", Deborah R. Coen acquaints readers not only with the century's most eloquent seismic commentators, including Alexander von Humboldt, Charles Darwin, Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, Karl Kraus, Ernst Mach, John Muir, and William James, but also with countless other citizen-observers, many of whom were women. Coen explains how observing networks transformed an instant of panic and confusion into a field for scientific research, turning earthquakes into natural experiments at the nexus of the physical and human sciences.
Seismology abandoned this project of citizen science with the introduction of the Richter Scale in the 1930s, only to revive it in the twenty-first century in the face of new hazards and uncertainties. "The Earthquake Observers" tells the history of this interrupted dialogue between scientists and citizens about living with environmental risk.
About the Author :
Deborah R. Coen is assistant professor of history at Barnard College, Columbia University. She is the author of Vienna in the Age of Uncertainty: Science, Liberalism, and Private Life, also published by the University of Chicago Press.
Review :
Nature "Crowd-sourced science has rarely been so thrilling. As Deborah R. Coen reveals, the rumbustious history of seismology began with roving scientists gathering locals' accounts of shocks, shudders and thumps. Luminaries from Charles Darwin to Alexander von Humboldt reported, too; Charles Dickens likened a quake to a great beast 'shaking itself and trying to rise.' Coen argues for a hybridized 'disaster science,' factoring in such responses from 'human seismographs' with geology and instrumental data." Luciana Astiz, University of California, San Diego; Times Higher Education "The cleverly ambiguous title of this book plays with the many uncertainties that surround our experience of earthquakes. Just who are these 'observers': are they scientists, farmers, or city dwellers? In answering this question, Deborah Coen offers a wealth of information in a book that reads with the appeal of fiction. In ten chapters, from "The Human Seismograph" to "A True Measure of Violence: California 1906 - 1935", she spins a compelling yarn of how nineteenth- and early twentieth-century scientists gathered accounts by observers of seismic events that could furnish quantifiable information." Gregory C. Beroza, Science "The book is well written, the documentation meticulous, and the depth of research impressive. At many points in the narrative, I marveled at the extent of the relevant material Coen has unearthed... [F]ascinating." David K. Chester, University of Liverpool, Environment and History "Scholarly and well-written... Highly recommended for both library and private purchase. Deborah Coen is to be congratulated for producing a first class introduction to a much-neglected theme within the history of earthquake science which should appeal, not only to seismologists, but also to historians of science and the hazard research community more generally. This is a successful volume by a highly talented academic writer. Carla Nappi, New Books in Science, Technology, and Society "A fascinating multisited study of the changing nature of material and human instruments through which communities have understood modern disasters." T. L. T. Grose, Colorado School of Mines, Choice "The superb writing in this book is engaging and outstanding for its insight into the human reaction to environmental disturbances. Highly recommended." Theodore M. Porter, University of California, Los Angeles "This superb book enables us to recognize seismology as a human science. Deborah R. Coen shows how earthquakes were assigned magnitudes according to a scale defined by human experience, and how people dispersed across the countryside learned to deploy precisely a language of earthquake description. Most strikingly of all, she situates these observers as active participants in processes of scientific data-gathering that formed the basis for a physics of seismic events and, with it, a scientific culture of democratic public reason." Andre Wakefield, Pitzer College "This is not merely a book about the past; it prompts the question: how will society cope with the inevitable natural disasters of the future? Deborah R. Coen's finely woven story reveals that there have been, and could be, entirely different ways of studying and coping with earthquakes than those we have become accustomed to imagining." Roger M. W. Musson, British Geological Survey "The Earthquake Observers is more than just a history of seismology: it tells the story of how ideas about earthquakes influenced human culture in the modern era. Deborah R. Coen is as entertaining as she is erudite. This fascinating study should appeal to a wide readership; strongly recommended." Daniel J. Kevles, Yale University "Deborah R. Coen brings to vivid life the human seismographic networks in four different countries, whose members were a principal source of data about earthquakes before the 1930s. She treats her subject with a capacious interpretive vision, revealing that, in relying on human reports, early earthquake science encompassed not just the measurable movements of the earth but also the human experience of the unsteady ground, including fear and terror. This is a stunningly original work, at once an eye-opening history and an implicit guide to how we might advantageously approach contemporaneous threats of disasters."
